Fixed term contract termination

sineadmc2001

Hi, i'm hoping someone could offer me some advice. I've been a fixed term employee with a major multinational for 2 years now. Our department has just gone through a complete restructure and we had a meeting today to announce the new roles and my name did not appear anywhere in the new department structure. Everybody had been informed of their new role prior to the meeting except me. My manager called me to one side after the meeting and asked me what my plans were, if i was looking around? I said no, should i be? He asked when my contract was up, i said Feb and he said 'well they dont like to extend past 2 years cause you are entitled to redundancy and all sorts'.

A little history... i recently (about a month ago) informed my manager that i was undergoing ivf treatment. This was during the time that the new roles were being decided. I've since found out that another girl who started in the department a month before me also fixed term contract has been given a new perm role under the new structure. The role was not advertised and i was not informed of the role. I am now pregnant (only 6 weeks) and i told my manager today as i was worried about being pregnant and unemployed in Feb. I asked about the possibility of being kept on until the summer even outside of a contract but he didnt committ either way.

I looked at my contract and there is a clause that excludes the unfair dismissal act, do i have any rights?

Doom

You have to be permanently employed for 104 weeks to avail of most of these rights, i.e. redundancy, unfair dismissal etc...but do seek advice from a professional or citizens advice bureau, with regards to someone in before you.
Terrible way to be treated, good luck.

CIARAN_BOYLE

You have normal employment rights, you being pregnant doesn't change anything as far as I can tell you just are.

Jobs don't have to be advertised, they can hire whoever they like as long as they aren't discriminating under the specified grounds under which discrimination is illegal. While pregnancy is one of those grounds (afaik) it seems as if they made the decision before they knew you were pregnant so they can't be discriminating against you because of your pregnancy.

In short your contract is expiring in Febuary and they are not renewing it. Its time to start job hunting.

ldxo15wus6fpgm

You might well have a case for gender discrimination here (discrimination because of pregnancy is covered by gender discrimination under EU law and the employment equality act 1998, amended by the equality act 2004 and the civil law (miscellaneous provisions) act 2011.

Look into going to the Equality Tribunal (or the circuit court if you have a really stong case - there is no limit for compensation here but they're a little less predictable) - best to ask a solicitor about it.

Be quick, there's a time limit of 6 months from the act of discrimination to bring a claim. After that if there are exceptional circumstances you might get another 6 months but don't count on it.

sineadmc2001

Thanks so much for the advice everyone, i really appreciate you taking the time to respond.

Munkymanmatt - do you think i should sit tight until my contract is up because i havent officially being given notice as yet?

CIARAN_BOYLE

CIARAN_BOYLE wrote: »

Jobs don't have to be advertised...

The OP is a fixed-term worker, and has certain entitlements under the terms of the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003.

Section 10(1) of that Act says

"An employer shall inform a fixed-term employee in relation to vacancies which become available to ensure that he or she shall have the same opportunity to secure a permanent position as other employees."

If the OP can produce evidence that another fixed-term employee in the company was made aware of a vacancy or given an opportunity to get permanent employment with the company, and can also show that she wasn't made aware of the vacancy or opportunity, then logically she's in a strong position to show that the company breached S.10(1) of the Act.

If she can show that, then she may also be able to get into the territory of why this happened - in other words, if the company treated her differently to another employee on an equality ground. But she's dealing with separate legislation and separate tribunals; the fixed-term issue is for the Rights Commissioner Service, while the equality issue would fall to be dealt with by the Equality Tribunal.